‘A Zoom Room? Tell him he’s dreamin’!’: Covid’s new castle
I don’t think the Kerrigans had a home theatre in their 1997 house from The Castle ... but if they did, it’s now a Zoom Room.
There seems to be no end to the ways in which the pandemic has challenged, if not changed, the Australian way of life.
From the way and where we work, to the kinds of businesses that have flourished, to a greater community acceptance of the use of technology. Telehealth anyone? Care to check-in with a QR code?
But nowhere is this transformation better evidenced than in the changing role of the Australian home. Darryl and Sal Kerrigan wouldn’t recognise the 2021 version of their 1997 home from The Castle. I don’t think the Kerrigans had a home theatre in their Coolaroo castle but if they did it’s now long gone. It’s been transformed into a Zoom Room (see house plans).
Not that tow-truck driving Dazza would have had much of a need for Zoom meetings, but you get my drift. Actually I think the home theatre flourished amid the McMansions of Australia for perhaps 20 years (1995-2015) before it was usurped by Silicon Valley. These days Australians watch movies on their phones, tablets, iPads, laptops, on the go and from any room in the house.
I first heard the term Zoom Room used quite nonchalantly by a real estate agent in October last year. By my reckoning within six months of the first lockdown the Australian home was responding to the pandemic’s effects. (While “Zoom Room” isn’t my creation I’m determined to make it part of the Aussie lexicon because it’s such a clever and deliciously rhythmic term.)
But it’s not just the addition of the Zoom Room that has transformed the Australian home. It’s everything that flows from the rise of the work-from-home movement. The great criticism of Australian suburbia is that for much of the day during the working week the house lays dormant. In fact planners disparagingly referred to the outer suburbs in particular as dormitory suburbs meaning places where people slept.
But with the coming of the coronavirus, the imposition of extended lockdowns, and the option of working from home, the home is “defibrillated” back into life.
The Aussie home is a bit like an airport terminal. Increase the dwell time in both and there’s a corresponding increase in spending either on duty free or on improving and beautifying the family home.
In one sense this is transfer spending: funds that would have been allocated to a Bali holiday are now directed into a new oven, dishwasher, microwave or, “what the hell, let’s do a complete kitchen renovation”. “Oh and if the builders are already here then maybe we should have the bathroom done too?”
What started out as an opportunity to get things done is now morphing into a fuller home-centric movement. Mum and dad have discovered the joys of working from home and are now determined to snare a hybrid working arrangement going forward.
The home is no longer a mere dormitory, a place to sleep, it is a place from which Australians now work, study, shop and pursue entertainment. Netflix anyone? And have a doctor’s consultation. And that’s just for starters.
Some in the property industry will recall the mid-1990s plan by a Japanese consortium to build a multi-function polis (city) near the Gold Coast. (It kinda morphed into a housing estate in Adelaide’s north later in the decade.)
However the concept that was the MFP, as it was called, is being reprised not so much for city planning – although there are implications that I will address in a later column – but for the role of the family home.
Ladies and gentlemen I give you the post-Covid multi-function home or MFH. (Sorry, I don’t know the correct Greek word for “home” in this context that would accurately replace “polis” or city.)
Covid is transforming the house from a place to sleep and occasionally to eat, into a far more complex place for a broader range of uses.
Two working parents may need two Zoom Rooms and if they have teenage kids there’s the additional need for workplaces, quiet nooks, where kids can login and do their homework. Apparently there’s a movement on to dissuade kids from spending too much time online in their bedroom so these nooks need to be in semi-common places.
I am surprised that the property industry hasn’t as yet responded with a business called Zoom Rooms ’r’ Us whose sole purpose it is to transform spare rooms into a room fit for Zoom. And all aimed, and priced, of course at those who “just need this done”.
CEOs of ASX 200 businesses, for example, might find themselves working from home and in need of someone with carpentry, technical and design skills to deliver an in-home broadcast studio replete with camera, lighting and family photos positioned over their right shoulder for staff or board Zoom meetings.
There are those who doubt the longevity of the working from home movement. My assessment is that this new way of working will be incorporated into the world of work going forward. It may morph into a hybrid arrangement, but it very much seems that “the office” let alone a “broadcast studio” have both now inveigled their way into the home. And the reason why this movement will continue is because working from home delivers Australians a better quality of life.
I wonder whether working from home will create an entire culture of nesting, of adorning, embellishing, of prettying the family home with the latest and most fashionable furniture and gadgetry? Including a focus on home and perimeter security. Maybe in a post-Covid world there’ll be a legacy of insecurity which manifests in demand for home security systems.
Across Australian suburbia today there are water tanks positioned down the blind side of the house. This is a legacy of the millennium drought which ended 12 years ago but which manifests in water tanks next to the house sitting silently, patiently, awaiting the next drought. It’s a kind of insurance policy that homeowners are happy to accept for decades into the future.
The same may be true of the lockdown-inspired veggie-patch revival. Or indeed of the need to build into modern houses greater storage facilities. Who knew that a surfeit of toilet rolls could make Australians feel safe, secure and on top of things? But where do you store them?
The family home isn’t a fixed concept. It is pliable, malleable; it shifts and shuffles in response to demographic, social and cultural trends. It was the Greeks and Italians who showed Anglo Aussies the value and the delight of indoor-outdoor living. And didn’t the Skips love it. Out with terms like back veranda; in with a space that for evermore shall go by one name, the oh-so-sophisticated, alfresco.
Even in the current depleted circumstances Australia is still the 13th largest economy on earth. Our wealth is shared among just 26 million people. We spend our prosperity not on armaments or on corruption as do some other nations but on housing, lifestyle, infrastructure perhaps (but mostly where that infrastructure improves our lifestyle – we love level crossing removals).
We are houseproud beyond measure. We drag guests through our homes from front to rear showcasing our house along the way. In the 1950s guests and suitors never got past the good room (or parlour) at the front. Today we prosperous Australians, joined by a large contingent of aspirational immigrants, channel our collective wealth and some might even say our feeling of worth and achievement, through our homes.
Darryl Kerrigan was right. Our home is our castle, be it his airport-abutting abode or the mighty McMansions of middle and regional Australia.
The evidence is that from May last year owner-occupiers have surged into the home buying market pulling well clear of investors (see chart).
Covid has triggered something in the Australian psyche: it is an urge that is quite primal, that is quintessentially Australian, that delivers a sense of security and of pride.
It is fashionable to say Covid has simply accelerated trends that were already in place. That may well be the case but there is a level of activity in the residential real estate market, in the configuration of the family home, in the demand for home-based furnishings and aligned accoutrement, that I think is taking the home in a different direction.
In the post-Covid world the home takes on a bigger, a more central, role in the narrative of Australian life.
If this philosophical view is correct then Australians will be prepared to invest more in the functionality and in the adornment of that home. And which would suggest that one of the businesses to be in during the 2020s is the development, the embellishment, the securing and the selling of Australian homes.
All replete, of course, with a Zoom Room fit for a CEO.
Bernard Salt is executive director of The Demographics Group; graphics by data scientist Hari Hara Priya Kanna
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